College Football Playoff: 3 takeaways from final rankings of 2018

1. No surprises from the top three teams selected by the committee

Alabama, Clemson, and Notre Dame finished a combined 38-0 over the course of the 2018 season. There was little reason to expect that the College Football Playoff selection committee was going to shuffle the order of the three teams that had stayed locked into the top three spots in the Top 25 rankings for the entire month of November.

The Crimson Tide and the Tigers emerged with conference championships from Power Five leagues. The Fighting Irish won all 12 of their games against FBS competition, with 10 of the 12 coming against Power Five opponents. While there was some discussion among the talking heads of college football that Georgia might inexplicably move up in the rankings to keep them in the top four, the committee wisely chose to stand pat on the teams at the top.

Whether going by the raw data, advanced metrics, or the eyeball test, these three teams did everything necessary to lock themselves into the semifinal field. The committee got it right in deciding not to reinvent the wheel at the very top.